


oh, heart (i would not dangle you down into the sorry places)

by hitlikehammers



Series: Cardiophilia Sequence [10]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Cardiophilia, Established Relationship, Happy Ending, Heartbeat Kink, Human Anatomy, Love, M/M, Pulsepoint Kink, Reichenbach Fix-It, Reichenbach Redux, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-09
Updated: 2014-04-09
Packaged: 2018-01-18 19:00:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,111
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1439296
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hitlikehammers/pseuds/hitlikehammers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It starts with sentiment. It continues with observation. It culminates in what John thinks, for the longest of seconds, has to be heartbreak, has to be what it means for the muscle to give out spontaneously for no more reason than it knows it won’t survive what’s to come.</p><p>So for the longest of seconds: it culminates in what John believes is an end he can’t halt or forestall.</p><p>And then he breathes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	oh, heart (i would not dangle you down into the sorry places)

**Author's Note:**

> Exists within the same 'verse as **[suddenly your heart showed me my way](http://archiveofourown.org/works/411375)** , **[the beat and beating heart](http://archiveofourown.org/works/422019/chapters/704161)** , **[your heart in the lightning (and the thunder that follows)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/446596)** , **[echoes through the caverns of a chest (the give and take)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/450331)** , **[i'd trade your fading heart (for the flailing beats in mine)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/461462/chapters/795460)** , **[i am tired, beloved (of chafing my heart against the want of you)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/523584/chapters/926410)** , **[all the jagged edges (of the broken heart made whole)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/547533/chapters/974935)** , **[within the beating, blessed (aching, rising; hand in hand)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/681182)** , and **[oh heart, you wicked saint](http://archiveofourown.org/works/714391)**. It stands on its own, but it can also be considered an AU of the 'verse itself, if you're not keen on thinking about Reichenbach in this context.
> 
>  
> 
> As always, but particular for this one, my thanks to **[speak_me_fair](http://speak-me-fair.livejournal.com)** for the Britpicking, the beta, and for calling me on my bullshit.
> 
> Credit to [Mary Oliver](http://www.amazon.com/The-Leaf-And-Cloud-Poem/dp/0306810735) for the title.

It starts with sentiment.

Which, admittedly, is not something John’s ever given much thought to in such specific terms. He’s thought about romance—he’s put near-embarrassing amounts of concentration into wooing his partners, securing an invitation upstairs. He’d had it down to mathematical certainty by the time he was deployed: x pounds spent on dinner plus y number of compliments about appearance, time z number of compliments about anything _but_ appearance, raised to the power of how well they ranked his grin and how well their outfits managed to coordinate (women, he’d learned—or else, the ones he tended to pull—had a largely-subconscious interest in that sort of thing), yielded the likelihood that he’d get laid even without a goodnight kiss at the door to seal the deal.

So romance, yes. Sentiment? Not so much.

The case is run-of-the-mill, really: athletes pawning foul play off on underlying arrhythmias, cardiac arrest from exertion when it’s really an intricate scheme in which posh bastards are trying to rig a squash tournament. Sherlock’s got the motive and the means after ten minutes on-scene; John’s more interested in the deceased’s young son, who’d been watching his father play when the man had collapsed, never to get back up. 

When Sherlock pegs the murder on a jealous would-be lover—a crime of passion, it would seem—John’s sitting with the boy, waiting for his mother to arrive. John talks to the child, tries to soothe him as best a stranger can when the unthinkable happens, but the boy says nothing, just stares blindly and clutches the ball he’d been learning to hit in his tiny fists, pumping it out of any given rhythm, frantic and hateful and hard.

John swallows; catches Sherlock’s eye from across the room. Sherlock nods, understands, and joins John quietly, settles at the boy’s right and speaks softly, rhythmic about the esteemed history of the game of squash, the density of different balls, the give. The boy doesn’t speak, or look at either one of them, but his grip on the ball in his hand loosens, and that seems all right.

When his mother comes, John’s grateful; he’s surprised, though, when the boy doesn’t run to her immediately, but pauses instead to give the ball to Sherlock, who hands it to John as the boy stops still, stares at them both, and seems to be waiting for a sign, a hint, and John isn’t sure what exactly he needs, but he tucks the ball beneath his arm and sets both hands on the boys shoulders, steadies him, and gives him a nudge toward his mum.

He doesn’t stay to see what happens next; turns to Sherlock instead. “Curry?” he asks, more worn than he’s got tangible reason to be.

“Mmm,” Sherlock agrees as he leads them away, taking John’s hand in his own and massaging the wrist for a moment before he stops still, turns sharply toward John with his eyes wide, and John’s confused, taken aback when Sherlock leans in and presses his lips to the side of John’s neck, his grip upon John’s wrist now crushing, almost painful.

John’s confused, until he shifts to steady Sherlock and feels the shape lodged in the crook of his arm.

“Oh,” John exhales, comprehension dawning as he pulls back despite Sherlock’s moan of protest—a desperate little sound that weighs heavy in John’s gut—and takes the ball from under his arm. 

“Pressure on the brachial artery,” he explains, and everything in Sherlock’s body loosens once John’s radial pulse returns and he can feel it, count it, know it as he often does; John can read the relief in him clearer than actual words, can breathe out against the retreating throb in Sherlock’s carotid artery as shies from a clamour to a hum.

“S’nothing special,” John shrugs apologetically, leaning in to worry Sherlock’s bottom lip with full affection, kissing the corners of his mouth. “Bit of a magic trick.”

Sherlock sighs, and it shakes through the both of them: the force of it, the things it releases, all lead and weight and fear. 

“Never do _that_ again,” Sherlock breathes, and he ducks his head beneath John’s chin for a few long moments before plucking the ball from John’s hands, dropping it into his coat pocket, and striding off again with John’s wrist back in his grasp: sentiment.

John doesn’t think of the squash ball again.

________________________________________________

It continues with observation.

Which, admittedly, is not something that John’s ever been all that great at, but he’s improving, because when you live with a man like Sherlock Holmes, you can’t help but pick things up, can’t help the shift that occurs in your mind, in yourself at the biological level from breathing in close proximity with a genius, with a prodigy, with an idiot who radiates abandon.

And when you’ve got a man like Sherlock—when you _love_ a man like Sherlock, who sees most things and can suss out the rest, who sleeps triple the hours he once allowed, simply to wake pressed up against John’s chest; when you live around and inside a mind that knows the whole of you, can press fingertips to your wrists for an instant and deduce with greater accuracy than ever before whether you’re tired, or agitated, or frightened, or sick based on _resonance, John_ or _the tempo, the character of the beat_ —when you give your heart to Sherlock Holmes, it’s not merely figurative, not just a saying.

When you give your heart to Sherlock Holmes, there is nothing left of you to hide.

And that’s why he started listening, started noticing in kind, he thinks—that’s why he began to file the sounds away like separate songs, snips of an unending, ever-shifting composition that he wants, _needs_ to understand with a similar mastery, those precious notes pumping through arterial airwaves that his professional mind identifies as healthy, hearty, safe, whole and yet he knows, now, knows them as _more_.

So he starts listening, and cataloguing, and memorising the very lilting of Sherlock Holmes’ pulse, because his own is stripped of all mystery, laid bare, and John likes to think it’s intentional, likes to think it’s an invitation, when Sherlock leaves his own heart open to be found and known in kind.

John _knows_ it’s a goddamned gift, and by all that’s holy or more than even that, he’ll die here and now before he lets it go uncherished. Unloved.

And thus: exertion is the first thing John parses, the first unique weft and warp he measures, recognises like Morse code, like braille writ against his hands as they’re pressed flush in close quarters. He’s practised in recognising that gentle rumble of thunder, gunfire, a single rolling thrum and resilient: Sherlock’s heart is suffused with these things, and John is filled with them by proxy, by the sheer permeability of all that moves between them, fibres and feeling and warmth.

Next, amusement—and John’s not shy about admitting that it’s one of his favourite tempos, soft against his ear as they lean against the sofa, watching mindless telly: that buoyant bass of four chambers expanding and contracting, ebbing and flowing like a lark against the chaotic heaving of his lungs as Sherlock shakes, unaligned with the melody and yet perfectly suited, utterly mesmerising as that low chuckle rumbles through Sherlock’s chest: magnetic. It’s a rare thing, too, because when Sherlock shams a feeling, he’s very good at it, to be sure, but for all the people he convinces so gorgeously, so effortlessly, he cannot fool is own mind, can’t convince his own heart, and John had found that fascinating, at first: the way that Sherlock could collapse into John’s arms in hysterics, shaking and sobbing his grief for a witness and John would catch the pump of his brachial pulse in passing as perfectly measured, perfectly steady, far less an actor then the man it went about beating within. But when Sherlock is genuinely entertained, suffused with the sort of rolling joy that overflows and shakes his frame, John relishes the lilt, every stitch and giggle mirrored as Sherlock’s heart almost larks, almost chortles and shivers the septum for the way it taps against John’s skin like a secret, playful and glittering. 

Gorgeous.

But If laughter dances soft in the whir of Sherlock’s blood, John’s learned just as closely the surge of terror and hard resolve that thrums; that shakes him when he recognises the uneven drumming when Sherlock strains himself, when his equilibrium gives and sways for too much adrenaline, too little rest, for dehydration and his dependence on nicotine patches and no more than the first sip of John’s morning tea. The skip of it, the off-swing of that metronome when it gallops too fast sends John’s own pulse on edge, pumps through him until his chest burns, until he manages to lower them to lying, chest to chest until John’s own heart coaxes Sherlock’s to ease, convinces him to give way, all weight and desperate tactility, that racing pulse turned malleable, pliant: nearly docile. John’s heart, it seems, lived perpetually posed at the ready, ever-willing to cup its twin in Sherlock’s chest and soothe it, mould its motions like mercury: molten alloy. 

John’s heart has never been put to better use.

Excitement—and arousal: deeper, fuller—takes a bit more time to comprehend, but it’s plain once he notes all the little tells: propped on Sherlock chest as he allows himself hedonistic pleasure of Sherlock’s heat and the slick wetness between them as they breathe; as they breathe and Sherlock’s heart beneath him pushes, presses and gives in turns with the same force as when he runs, as when the Game calls him but a different intensity. A greater intensity, if John’s being honest, if he’s willing to acknowledge the possibility of bias and hope. Sherlock’s eyes are glazed and he gropes, grasps for John’s wrists and brings them to his lips, doesn’t kiss so much as simply hold, and John allows his own eyelids to flutter closed as he sinks deeper, can make out the lines of Sherlock’s ribs beneath him for the moment, the split second before it’s all sound and sensation, all the beating and the pressure and the pull in Sherlock’s chest; and it suits him, the power of it, the frenetic energy and the need to be seen and heard, to be known above all others with the weight of it, the unrelenting, demanding percussion and John doesn’t think as he brings his hands to Sherlock’s chest, raises his head just enough that the sound is lessened but the pump against the skin can still be found, and John uses the lines of his cupped palms to frame that quaking miracle of muscle and lightning and wild abandon and reckless devotion, to hold it through the skin and Sherlock shivers—shivers, and kisses John’s wrists.

As if he’s sacred; as if he’s made of light.

So it’s easy, in comparison, to name the horrible way that the force of the Chase blends with the danger of exhaustion, of pushing too far: John’s known the hollow bang of it before, in other chests: young children at the clinic, frightened mothers-to-be, the boys in the sand who knew it was no good and yet couldn’t bear it, not just yet.

Terror. That’s what that tinny ring means beneath any ribs, inside any skin. It means absolute horror and unconscionable fear in Sherlock’s pulse between the trial and the sentencing, the way they know that the man who seeks to destroy them—burn the heart, the heart, the _heart_ and how could he know, how could Jim Moriarty have possibly foreseen what he was vowing, what he was threatening, more than life and breath, more than simply beating and cadence and blood—but John knows it, all sorrow and stumbling regret: uneven, that jumping, flailing heart caught up in a wild thrashing, in death throes, and _no_.

No, John will not have that. John won’t allow that. Not now. Not for them. Not like this.

Not ever. 

“They won’t convict him,” Sherlock whispers, and words tremble with his muscle, the pulse, and John kisses Sherlock’s chest lightly, tries to calm that racing heart with all the love he’s ever given it, ever felt or known, all the warmth and hope and need and joy and all of the unthinkable feeling that floods John’s chest when he so much as _looks_ at Sherlock, when he so much as sees that chest rise and fall —all the things John’s felt so keenly and yet feared would be too little, too inadequate even as they were _too much_ : he takes it all and he pours it forth from his lips as he lines across the perimeter of Sherlock’s most vital organ, John’s world beneath the ribs.

The shaking lessens, with time, but doesn’t recede entirely, and John feels the burning like a fucking phantom limb.

And John is a soldier, John is predictable for all that Sherlock finds him interesting: when John is paralysed with the threat of ending, the fear of pending loss, he fights it. He rails until he bleeds.

Until it sears.

So John holds Sherlock closer in the night, and keeps them pressed tighter as they move against one another, as they peak and fall together, as they cool and their hearts come back to beating rather than racing, and that’s where he finds it, that’s where he understands what suffuses, what underlies and supersedes each tempo change and ligature mark, each time Sherlock’s heart teaches John something new. John realises that the secrets of those rhythms are accompanied by a softness of gaze, a pattern of blinking, a swallowing that emphasises the pulsing and a breathing that speeds to make up for, to cover the small inconsistencies and fill the gaps, so as to concretise a singular resonance. 

_Love_ , John names it, breathes out against Sherlock’s chest and watches his nipple harden at the stream of cool air from John’s lips, touches his tongue to the apex beat and hums against it, because he can feel his own heart seeking communion with the feel, the sound, a surge and a gasp and then—

But it’s more. It’s love and then it’s _more_ , and perhaps there’d been a time, a majority of time within John’s life where he’d genuinely believed that love was as good as it got. Except then his paradigm changed, and rules were relative, and absolutes were child’s play and love merely felt inadequate when confronted with the sheer enormity of _this_ : this gorgeous sinus rhythm peppered with little flutters, here and there over long stretches of time, just a hair faster than usual but so much deeper, profound in some inexplicable way, all bated breath as the muscle contracts, beats less like a pump, less a fibrous bundle and more, instead, like wings; and there’s a languidness, a fluidity in the way Sherlock’s heart sounds, the way it moves, one beat almost flowing, nearly bleeding into the next like endless notes, emulating the way his bow slides elegantly over the strings in perfect syncopation, an endless stream of sound but this is sweeter still, more immaculate, more enveloping because it resonates, it crescendos and gives way to surge again and John is breathless with it, as taken and transformed by it as water turned into wine and the terror isn’t absent, but instead transformed in kind: clings instead of shivers, grasps what it fears for and defends to the death like something irreplaceable, something vital, a miracle of matter and light.

And that’s what this is, isn’t it; that’s exactly the nature of this thing that they have.

_Miraculous._

And John’s not immune to the way his own chest swells to know it, to think of it, to see and observe and apply method to all the madness that is his world and his life and his soul and read what’s real in the beat of Sherlock’s heart ever more accurately, and if there were any doubts as to what this meant for them, what this was between them and the significance of it—if any foolish questions remained, John has clear answers, now, writ in blood and the pulse of life itself. John knows his own two hearts, knows them shared and loved on more sides than he’d ever fathomed or deserved and while John would never dream of denying it, there’s something to be said of knowing, of _knowing_ even amidst all the knowledge and the proof, that there wasn’t, wouldn’t ever be a reason to second guess.

So John commits these songs, these symphonies sung deep in Sherlock’s chest to the halls of his memory, to the walls of his own heart.

And that’s how he knows. That’s how he can tell, now, when something’s right, when something’s wrong. When something’s interesting, versus dull. When Sherlock’s mood is bright, or veering black. When John himself is a want, and when John is a necessity beyond all others.

John doesn’t even have to think about it, after a while. It’s as natural as breathing; he knows the language of Sherlock’s body better than any mother tongue.

_______________________________________________________

It culminates in what John thinks, for the longest of seconds, has to be heartbreak, has to be what it means for the muscle to give out spontaneously for no more reason than it knows it won’t survive what’s to come.

For the longest of seconds, it culminates in what John believes is an end he can’t halt or forestall.

And then he breathes.

Which, admittedly, is difficult in and of itself. Because he sees his world ending. 

He sees his heart stopping. 

He _sees_.

But by the time the tables are turned on them, by the time lies are told amidst insignificant half-truths, by the time John’s chest learns to ache because it hurts to live in fear of losing the whole of you, of knowing the breath of oxygen and dying slow as it fades—by the time John needs to _know_ , lest he lose everything, Sherlock’s heart reads like a book to him, writ in a language that only he knows, and while he isn’t an expert, he believes in his ability to fill in the holes as they come.

And Sherlock hadn’t slept, the night before it happened, the night they spent in the lab—Sherlock sat on the floor with his arm around John’s shoulders, his open palm on John’s sternum where John leant, draping himself across Sherlock’s chest.

So John knows what he heard in Sherlock’s heartbeat that night, knows what it means that Sherlock’s pulse was mostly steady—trembled a bit: nervous, not petrified. John knows what it means that the beat was strong: resolved, unwavering, undaunted. John knows what it _means_ that when he exhaled and Sherlock pulled him closer, that heart shuddered, almost exultant, for all depth of feeling as he ran one hand through the hairs at John’s nape, the other flinging and catching his squash ball in a measured cadence between surfaces, between chests.

That damned fucking _squash ball_.

And when Sherlock let him leave on his own to find Mrs. Hudson, that heart beneath his ear pumped hard when the phone rang, but held steady as John heard that awful news—those awful lies, that misdirection, and John should have known, he should have _known_ because he’d heard and felt and yet he’d doubted, he hadn’t trusted, and by the time he had realised his own folly, he’d returned to a roof and a pain in his chest and _That’s what people do, isn’t it? Leave a note_.

And yet, John’s had all the notes he needs from the very beginning, from the goddamned start, strung into a masterpiece between ventricles and atria, and John had been blind for a moment, but he’s never been deaf.

And John knows what he heard that night, what it meant; what it means.

John trusts what it means.

And John knows to do more than merely _see_.

So John breathes when the world comes crashing down. John breathes as he hits the ground, as he staggers to his feet and faces what appears as nothing short of the apocalypse bleeding harsh, the whole of him flowing free across the pavement, his own blood staining the cement.

But John breathes, because the heart against him, within him: that heart still whispered not to worry. John breathes, because that heart’s never lied to him.

He’ll be damned if he questions it now. 

So John presses onward; keeps his own pulse from spiking too desperately, too dangerous for fear. John takes the extra moment, pushes harder, and lets his own heart thrum with a certainty his brain’s still wrestling with, still fearing false as John moves toward the neck and not the wrist, goes to check the carotid pulse and feels it singing strong and steady, and his own heart bursts with it, frantic and full and thin with so much useless fear, and when John’s pulled back from the body, he doesn’t have to feign, doesn’t have to act to maintain whatever cover Sherlock obviously needs: his hand goes to his chest and his eyes stream as he trembles, and it is more honest than his own breath, it is more real than his own blood.

Not more real than the pulse he’d felt, though, in the body before him that’s meant to be dead. Nothing is more real than the world when it continues spinning.

Nothing is more real than the beating of that heart.

_______________________________________________________

It ends, in that it doesn’t end. Because _this_ doesn’t end, not while either one is still breathing, not while either heart is still beating, and John’s heart is pounding as hard and fast as anything

They don’t end. Not them.

So when John pushes open the doors to the morgue, he’s not all that surprised to find Sherlock, bare-chested with the pile of his red-stained clothes at his naked feet, sitting on the mortuary table, leaning toward a compact balanced in the cup of Molly’s palm as he dabs away the lines of blood—real, fake, irrelevant—from his skin: not so white, now, not so far gone.

John’s not all that surprised. That doesn’t mean his chest doesn’t seize. It doesn’t mean that his throat doesn’t tighten and that the tortured sound of grief and longing that escapes doesn’t belong to him and him alone.

Sherlock’s eyes raise to his immediately, and John can tell in the way that Sherlock shifts, that Sherlock breathes and swallows and his posture realigns that he feels it, just as strongly, just as keenly as John does: electrical currents against battered muscle, lightning at the centre of chests that strikes twice, that will strike as many goddamned times as it needs to in order to keep them, in order to sustain them and hold them and keep what transcends mere physicality between them from flickering, from fading away.

It’s pain and it’s joy, and it sears, burns truer from the heart of him than any threat or sacrifice, and John wants nothing more than to reach, than to touch, than to feel it in and on and through the man he loves who is alive, who is breathing and watching and whose lips are trembling just footsteps away, just the space of air and breath.

And John crosses that space, that distance, and Molly’s eyes are wide, but Sherlock looks like a shattered glass made new, like a drowning man who breaks the surface and grasps the hand of his saviour with dry land in sight once more, and his fingertips are at either side of John’s neck as he cradles John to the very core of him, to the apex of his heart and breathes, breathes, breathes and John hadn’t realised his lungs were only half filling until he inhales infinity in Sherlock’s arms again and Jesus, _Jesus_.

“Just a magic trick,” John gasps, damning and incredulous and hurting and healing and so fucking grateful that his heart’s quite so clever, has a brain that can match the way it spreads and hopes and holds.

Sherlock’s pulse trips, speeds in the quiet that follows as the arms around John’s body cling all the more, and John knows the words spoken in that rhythm, the things that beat means to say, means to prove.

“Never,” John murmurs into the hollow of Sherlock’s throat. “ _Never_ do that again.”

Sherlock exhales, shaky, and pulls John all the closer.

The pulse there trills; makes promises deeper than words.


End file.
